Quotes to inspire and reflect

He who is too much afraid of being duped has lost the power of being magnanimous.

How True it is that our destinies are decided by nothings and that a small imprudence helped by some insignificant accident, as an acorn is fertilized by a drop of rain, may raise the trees on which perhaps we and others shall be crucified.

When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my Dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively, but their shape and lustre have been given by the attrition of ages.

The masses are the material of democracy, but its form—that is to say, the laws which express the general reason, justice, and utility—can only be rightly shaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property.

In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.

What once was cuddled must learn to kiss/The cold worm’s mouth. That’s all the mystery.

To be always ready a man must be able to cut a knot, for everything cannot be untied.

Most persons have died before they expire—died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion.

We are all like Scheherazade’s husband, in that we want to know what happens next.

Although the novel exercises the rights of a created object, criticism has not those rights, and too many little mansions in English fiction have been acclaimed to their own detriment as important edifices.

What the mulberry leaf is to the silkworm, the author’s book, treatise, essay, poem, is to the critical larvae that feed upon it. It furnishes them with food and clothing.

A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist.

The art of creation / is older than the art of killing.

Never speak of yourself to others; make them talk about themselves instead: therein lies the whole art of pleasing. Everyone knows it and everyone forgets it.

A mellowing rigorist is always a much pleasanter object to contemplate than a tightening liberal, as a cold day warming up to 32° Fahrenheit is much more agreeable than a warm one chilling down to the same temperature.

In the dust where we have buried the silent races and their abominations we have buried so much of the delicate magic of life.

To be too conscious is an illness—a real thoroughgoing illness.

What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.

Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

A just cause is not ruined by a few mistakes.

What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred?

[Pjeople in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed.

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.

Look for a lovely thing and you will find it, / It is not far— / It never will be far.

Savagely is necessary ever}' four or five hundred years in order to bring the world back to life. Otherwise the world would die of civilization.

Beauty more than bitterness / Makes the heart break.

There is no object on earth which cannot be looked at from a cosmic point of view.

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remarkable.

Thou, O my country, hast thy foolish ways, / Too apt to purr at every stranger’s praise!

No absolute is going to make the lion lie dow'n with the lamb: unless the lamb is inside.

We pay for security with boredom, for adventure with bother.

Art is the flower of life and, as seed, it gives back life.

We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.

If you try to nail anything down in the novel, either it kills the novel, or the novel gets up and walks away with the nail.

 

One would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.

 

Equations are more important to me because politics is for the present but an equation is something for eternity.

 

A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.

 

Unless we remember we cannot understand.

 

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

 

Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.

Death has made His darkness beautiful with thee.

 

In this life there’s nothing new in dying,

 

Come, my friends. ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

 

Terror … often arises from a pervasive sense of disestablishment; that things are in the unmaking.

 

Honesty pays, but it don’t seem to pay enough to suit a lot of people.

As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider.